Friday Favorite: Edible Houseplants
Earlier this week I picked up Growing Tasty Tropical Plants from the library. I have a few edible houseplants, namely herbs and a few citrus trees. My variegated citrus from Monticello has a few lemons on it (sorry, forgot to take photos of them yesterday). When you live in an area with long, cold winters, houseplants can be a saving grace, particularly edible ones.
This book is very dangerous for someone like me. After just flipping through it, I already have a wishlist of tropical plants I “need” to add to my collection. At least with an edible plant you feel like you’re getting something more out of your houseplants. I did start seeds for pink bananas yesterday, they should be interesting. I’ll keep you posted on how those grow.
I can’t wait to add a few more interesting edibles to my houseplants list. I’m thinking avocados and papaya might be the first things I’ll buy, a black pepper plant sounds pretty interesting too!
Do you have any edible houseplants?
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Pure Joy
Sitting down to a meal of things that were produced here is a wonderful thing. On Tuesday night we did just that. I finally harvested that lettuce I started in containers a month ago.
We enjoyed it topped with: venison tenderloin produced by Mr Chiots (aka the fearless hunter), eggs from our very own flock, seaweed from Mt Rose Herbs, cheese from a local dairy, and an avocado purchased at the co-op (the small farm I usually order from doesn’t have any yet). We topped it all off with a Meyer lemon vinaigrette, which was made with lemons I bought from Lemon Ladies Orchard and olive oil from Chaffin Family Orchards.
Boy was it delicious, once I get my avocado tree growing and a few dairy sheep I’ll be all set for this meal to be 100% home produced. Actually, I’ll probably never have those things, but I enjoy eating as much as I can from my garden!
Do you have anything you dream of growing for yourself but probably won’t?
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The 5×5 Garden Challenge
After putting in a long day of coding yesterday, Mr Chiots got the 5×5 Challenge website up & running (a big thanks to him). Over there you will find: a forum for questions (if you want to be a regional mentor let me know so I can add you as an admin), badges for your blog/website, and some general info. Of course we also started a facebook page.
This challenge is all about encouraging new gardeners. If you’re new to gardening we hope this challenge encourages and teaches you. If you’re a seasoned gardener we hope you use this challenge to encourage new gardeners and pass along your knowledge or maybe to try something new. Each Wednesday, the 5×5 Challenge update will be posted here on Chiot’s Run. Next week we’ll start at the beginning, getting your plot ready to go. Your homework for this week is to find a spot you think will be perfect for your 5×5 plot. Try to find a nice sunny location away from large trees. If you have a shady garden, you can go with shade tolerant vegetables instead.
If you have no garden area, get 5 large containers to grow in. For those of you who will be container gardening or gardening the ground (these plants will do OK in the ground as well), this week we have a giveaway of the Container Kitchen Garden Collection from Renee’s Garden. Comment below for your chance to win.
Have you ever grown vegetables in containers? Which vegetable were you most successful at growing?
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Seed Starting 101 eBook is HERE!
After much work, it’s nice to announce that the Seed Starting 101 eBook is finally finished. After much debate about putting it out as a regular e-book for a few dollars on Amazon or somewhere else, I decided to offer it as a downloadable PDF for free. A big thanks to those of you who have donated to support our efforts.
Inside the book, there are 20 pages filled with photos and information. I also included my chart on the shelf life of seeds.
If you have any questions or find any mistakes, please let me know. With this format I can easily add things to the book if needed. Hopefully this is early enough for most of you. Feel free to pin this book and share it with others. I’m hoping more and more gardeners will find joy in nurturing their own garden plants from seed.
Have you already started seeds for the 2013 gardening season?
Download the Seed Starting 101 e-book PDF (12.2 MB)
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Cultivate Simple 24: Say No to GMO
This week on Cultivate Simple we talk about random topics and get a little political, sharing our frustrations about living in a society where not many people act on their convictions.
Don’t you love our potting bench/studio?
The Survival Podcast – Defining the Machine Podcast about how government is bought and paid for.
Reader Questions
Daina from FrontYardFoodie: I know you like to buy local and use farmers but where do you get things like dish soap and baking soda, etc?
Soap and other bulk items are often purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs. Their castile soap is particularly good, here’s a post I wrote about it.
The automatic dishwashing detergent from Tropical Traditions is the best you’ll ever find (even over non-green options).
Brian’s Geeky Corner
Angie asked about keeping data on an external hard drive. Brian recommends these hard drives: G-Technology Hard Drives
Sign up for BackBlaze and start backing up today!
Book of the Week
Check out Heidi Egerman Designs– Thanks for the support Heidi!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56:45 — 80.9MB)
